A Look into my Life

And Brighton got my shoes wet. The past two days I’ve been taking advantage of the rail system within the UK. It’s one aspect that I find truly amazing about this country. You can get from one point to another by train in a very short amount of time and it doesn’t cost a lot. Yesterday I made the journey to Oxford. I was actually very close to it when I went on my road trip. I figured it would be best to tackle the city without having to worry about a vehicle.

It definitely is a unique town. I quite enjoyed walking around it. I made sure to drop by Christchurch. It has some significance to Harry Potter. I’ll have to wait for a resident HP expert to chime in, Kim!! I ended up walking through a park and made it to out skirts of town. It was a long walk back in but I made it! At this point I was starting to really feel the effects of the cold that I was hoping was only a sore throat. Check out the Oxford album, there’s some good photos!

Today I boarded a train to Brighton. It’s on the southern coast of England. It is know for it’s rocky beaches. I didn’t quite know what to expect. The beach is completely covered with what we would call river rock. It’s much smaller, about an inch in diameter. It’s the weirdest thing! So I went down to the waters edge with a goal in mind. I wanted to touch the water!! This is when things went terribly wrong. I studied where the water would come up to and finally felt comfortable going near it. Well, one of those random large waves decided to rear it’s ugly head and before I knew it I was in water up to my ankles. OOPS! So I had some wet feet for the remainder of the day, great for being sick as well. I walked along the edge of the beach. They have a sort of board walk there. There is also Brighton Pier which is like an amusement park suspended over the sea. 

Upon arriving back in London I made my way to Oxford Street. We Americans have Black Friday, Londoners have the first Saturday of December. Oxford Street and Regent Street is closed to traffic and as I found out people swarm the area. It was unbelievable the amount of people that were out. I also made what will probably be my last visit to the Regent Street Apple Store. 

Tomorrow I’m heading to Canterbury. Check back tomorrow evening for those details. I have also dropped below a week remaining in London. I’m still in shock that this is my last Saturday in the city. Quite amazing! I can almost see home from this point!!

I took ma and pa back to the airport this morning. Everything went without issue. Mom is quite worn out but she did survive the week, just. And dad did too!!

Yesterday I once again hired a car, just for the day this time. Mom wanted to see the prime meridian at Greenwich and Hampton Court Palace. So we took off early in the morning in our Vauxhall Astra heading for Greenwich Park. There we wandered around the Royal Observatory in the drizzle that would accompany us all day.

After our visit there we headed across the south of London through terrible Friday afternoon traffic. This is when I really wished I’d opted for an automatic transmission. Regardless I now have a stronger left leg. We arrived at Hampton Court with only a little time to actually go through. We did hit all the major areas however, minus the gardens. But it was raining and despite the current situation, would have been miserable to go through. The rooms within were beautifully decorated and were massive. It must have been quite extraordinary to live in there in the 1700s. There had been a fire in the King’s portion of the state rooms. It was repaired and refurbished and looks fantastic. 

We then departed Hampton Court with the Satnav set for Piccadilly Circus in the centre of London. I want mom and dad to see the lights there as well as the Christmas lights of Regent Street and Oxford Street. We looped up through there seeing everything and being one of the few cars on Oxford Street mixed amongst the busses. Quite intimidating! We stopped off at a few shops and got them some souvenirs, dropped them off back at the hotel, returned the car, and dined on some pub food before calling it an evening!

I’ll put of pictures of yesterday as well as pictures from their trips to Windsor, Stonehenge, and Paris. 

Status Update

In two week time I should be landing, or near landing at Philadelphia International. 

I have a little bit of a dilemma on my hands. After I return home, finish up covering my experience here and write about re-culturing myself the the way of the United States I don’t really know what to do with my blog. I will keep it up for quite a while. I hope to go back through and do a lot of proofing and minor tweaks to the posts, but once that is done I have no idea what else to write about. So for the next couple weeks I’d like to hear from everyone who has been viewing and ready for the past 3 months to leave some feedback on where and what you’d like to see from my site. I’d love to post about my last semester at school but it would all be the same; cold, it snowed, and class sucked. So I’m open for ideas!!